I know I haven't posted much. We have been on an ultra frugal dining plan and it doesn't leave much room for creativity. I use recipes I know work and are basic but they aren't delicious fun so I hesitate to share. I also left Daring Bakers because I didn't have time for the time consuming projects.
A recent delicious dinner we had was Sweet & Sour Chicken from the cookbook "Deseret Recipes". It was published almost 30 years ago by the LDS church and has some good basic recipes you can modify as needed. This is a great example. It makes a delicious, simple sweet & sour sauce.
1 cut up whole chicekn
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup oil
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 can pineapple chunks in juice
1 cup sugar
4 Tbsp flour
3/4 cup vinegar
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp ginger
1 large green pepper, cut in strips
2 Tbsp chicken drippings (from browning chicken)
Coat the chicken pieces with the 1/2 cup flour. Heat up the oil in a skillet and brown the chicken. Then put the chicken in a shallow pan and turn the oven to 350. Sprinkle the salt/pepper over the chicken pieces. Reserve 2 Tbsp chicken drippings. Set aside.
Drain the pineapple chunks liquid into a measuring cup and add water to make 1 1/4 cups liquid. In a different saucepan, combine the liquid with 1 cup sugar, 4 Tbsp flour, 3/4 cup vinegar, 1 Tbsp soy sauce, 1/4 tsp ginger and 2 Tbsp chicken drippings. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil for 2 minutes then pour over chicken.
Put in oven uncovered and bake for 30 minutes. Pull out and add pineapple chunks and green pepper strips. Bake 30 minutes more.
Serve over rice.
---------------------
This was so delicious and simple! You could turn it into more of a take-out stir fry by using chunks of chicken and cooking them on the stove top and then sauteing the pineapple and bell pepper with it quickly before covering in sauce. It would be faster and a fun variation, but cost a bit more. We just pulled chicken off the bones on our plates and mixed up to make it like stir fry. I loved the sauce. Yum.
